A Comparative Study of Economic Schools of Fertility by Using Data from Iran

Economic theories have significantly helped to the explanation of fertility behavior. Since 1960 that Becker provided an economic analysis of fertility and then Easterlin challenged Becker's analysis in 1966 to this time, economics of fertility has experienced the vast theoretical and empirical extensions within Chicago-Columbia and Pennsylvania schools. The former uses neoclassical pure economic theory and positivist methodology and then focuses on demand side in which its key variable is price of parents’ time while the latter is based on the mixture of economic theory with sociology and accentuates on supply side whereas its key variable is relative income. In Chicago model, the supply is exclusively determined by biological factors such as fecundity while in Pennsylvania model, supply is narrowed down behavioral factors such as breastfeeding. To test the credibility of two models, the evidence is provided from Iran. The data in years 1965-2013 is used to estimate the effect of some variables such as income, education and female labor force participation on fertility. Results show that both models are right and helpful in explaining fertility behavior and they are complementary to each other.